Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie - Conqueror of Shamballa Blu-rayReview

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This is the end... or, well, it was a few years ago.

By D. F. Smith

In light of recent events, watching this movie feels pretty weird. A new Fullmetal Alchemist series is running on Japanese TV right now, conceived in large part with the aim of rewriting The Conqueror of Shamballa out of existence.

If you follow Japanese animation at all, you already know all the details, but here's a primer for anyone who showed up late to the party. The original Alchemist TV show ended with an infamous cliffhanger. A year or so later this movie showed up to provide the exciting conclusion. In the meantime, Hiromu Arakawa's manga series was chugging along with a completely different story – the story that's hitting the airwaves now as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Which leaves the events of this movie in a peculiar sort of place – "retconned" into the ether, as comic book nerds would put it.

So this may or may not be the "real" conclusion to Edward Elric's story. It's a great-looking action romp, though, with an ending that might jerk a tear or two regardless. It doesn't have enough running room to get everything right, but then the TV show left an awful lot of loose ends hanging.

At the end of the TV series, Alphonse Elric got his real body back, but only after his world gave up another body in exchange – his brother's, which wound up transported to something like our "real" world. The movie kicks off two years later, with Ed stuck in Munich, Germany during the days of the beer-hall putsch and Al trying to find a way to get him back home.

What ensues could be fairly described as a whirlwind of events. Conqueror of Shamballa tells two parallel stories for each of the brothers, serves up four or five great-looking action set-pieces, and at the same time tries to fit in a modest amount of screen time for nearly every supporting character from the entire TV series – even the ones who got killed before it was halfway over. (Edward happens to trip over a few familiar faces there in Germany.) It's an awful lot of material to cram into just over 100 minutes, and it says something that the story actually doesn't feel rushed most of the time.

You can poke some decent-sized holes in the plot if you feel like it. I'm still not sure I could pass a test on exactly how the passage between worlds is meant to work. How did our boys get their bodies rejiggered in just the way they wanted to? Well… maybe the thing responds to the power of positive thinking. For most of the gaps in logic, though, the movie at least has a good try at papering over them.

Where the story has real problems is before the big world-crossing finish, when it's trying and failing to serve up a decent villain. That was one of the things the TV series did just right, taking its time to build a collection of compelling bad guys. With so little time to maneuver in, the movie has to cook up what it can on short notice. Essentially, our boys are opposed by a woman who wants to do something foolish because she's ignorant and crazy. Compared to first-class villains like Lust, Greed, and Scar – especially Scar, a character you could genuinely sympathize with – she can't help but feel like a lightweight.

Still, by the time the movie's over, the central issue of the series is settled. Ed and Al are together and whole again, and after an adventure wild enough that we feel like they earned it. The new TV show may have pulled the rug out from under them again, but here, for a little while, they found themselves a happy ending.